Most, if not all, personal computers and similar devices are connected to one or more auxiliary devices or inputs with cables. These cables connect personal computers and similar devices to area networks, broadband sources, telephones, power sources, printers, fax machines, cameras, modems, display devices such as monitors, speakers and similar devices. A single computer can easily have four to six cable connections to such devices and inputs. Since these cables normally are supplied in standard lengths, the cables are almost always longer than necessary, resulting in excess cable or slack. The slack portions of multiple cables used in connection with, for example, a personal computer typically end up as a tangled snarl of different cables, shoved under, alongside or behind a desk, computer or elsewhere.
Cable reels with mechanisms for paying out and retracting single cables are known. Typically these devices have include a length of cable wound on a spring loaded or manually operated reel with a first connector on a first cable end adjacent the reel and a second connector on the second cable end. The user connects the first cable connector to the first connection point and pulls the second end of the cable to the second connection point, unreeling the cable from the spool or reel. Such devices may eliminate the slack in a single cable, but do not provide a solution for devices using multiple cable to connect to multiple other devices and sources.